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Aims to review, update, and extend the understanding of country‐of‐origin (COO) effects in China. This involves examining the nature and extent of the COO effect amongst urban Chinese consumers and the impact of COO on actual purchase behaviour.

A questionnaire is used to collect COO information from a sample of 432 Shanghai consumers and a consumer panel is used to track the purchase behaviour of the same consumers over 6 months.

First, Chinese consumers generally say they prefer to buy local Chinese grocery brands. Second, Chinese consumers believe it is important to buy local brands for a range of Chinese‐style and Western‐style product categories. Third, however, the stated preference for Chinese brands was generally not reflected in actual purchase behaviour.

The results support the growing view that Chinese consumers are not necessarily attracted to foreign brands. However, the disparity between stated preferences and behaviour suggests that there are other factors that may moderate the COO effect, such as imperfect knowledge of which brands are local or foreign.

To capitalize on the stated preference for local brands, and to address consumers’ imperfect knowledge of which brands are local or foreign, managers may benefit by promoting the Chinese origin of their brands and by positioning their brands as being local.

In contrast to the experimental designs used in previous studies, actual purchase data is measured here in a real‐life setting. The study provides a strong empirical update on the COO effect in China.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Palka et al.'s model to predict young Chinese consumers' mobile viral attitudes, intents and behavior.

A paper survey was administered to 835 college students in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, and Liuzhou in summer and fall, 2010. The data were subject to statistic analyses including Pearson correlation, structural equation modeling, and backward regression with SPSS and AMOS.

The SEM model testing results confirmed the chain of young Chinese consumers' viral attitudes to intents to actual behavior. Subjective norm, perceived cost and pleasure were significant predictors of their viral attitudes. Their viral attitudes, perceived utility and subjective norm predicted their intent to pass along entertaining electronic messages. Their intent to forward useful electronic messages was determined by their viral attitudes, perceived utility and market mavenism. Their viral attitudes, intents and market mavenism predicted their mobile viral behavior.

It pays to foster Chinese consumers' favorable attitudes toward mobile viral marketing. It is advisable to know both target consumers and their associates very well. It is recommended to convince Chinese consumers that their friends and relatives can benefit greatly from viral content forwarding. Mobile messages with entertaining, useful, relevant and self‐involved values can go viral more easily.

The paper is probably the first study the integration of the TPB, TAM and Palka et al.'s model to predict Chinese consumers' mobile viral attitudes, intents and behavior.

Looks at consumer research in Greater China including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Maps out the contributions within this area and guides future research. Examines the state of the art over the 1979‐97 period, with particular emphasis on the topics that have been researched, the extent of the theory development in the field and the methodologies used in conducting research. Uses content analysis to review 75 relevant articles. Suggests that, while a considerable breadth of topics have been researched, there remains much to be done, there is further room for theoretical development in Chinese consumer behaviour studies; and the methodologies used need improvement and further refinement.

The purpose of this paper is to determine consumer characteristics, buying behaviour, and the factors that influence the Chinese wine consumer.

The study applies qualitative and quantitative methodology, together with a literature review and a strategic environmental scan of the Chinese wine market and consumer behavior.

Consumer education, wine‐related activities, channels of communication, taste, country of origin, quality, and price rank are found to be important factors influencing the buying and consumption behavior of Chinese consumers.

Results suggest that there is a need for stakeholders to develop and implement informational and educational marketing strategies to educate and inform consumers in ways that reflect their needs and expectations according to demographic characteristics.

The challenge for the stakeholders will be to: penetrate this emerging market to establish presence and capture market share; strive for long‐term growth and profit sustainability; create competitive advantage through core competencies; promote and sell quality products applying the principles of yield management “to charge the right price, to the ideal consumer, at the right time, in the right place”; and build brand loyalty.

The paper offers useful findings for stakeholders in the wine supply chain. Special attention should be given to the alcoholic beverage retailer and hospitality operators for whom wine revenue is the core of aggregate beverage revenue.

The paper contributes to the body of knowledge of consumer behavior in relation to wine consumption in an emerging market. The results benefit players in the wine supply chain; especially retail and hospitality operations.

This research explores the purchasing behavioural drivers of young Chinese consumers purchasing foreign clothing brands. The aim is to include a range of drivers identified by different investigations into a single approach, to determine direct and indirect channels by which these drivers influence purchasing behaviour, and their relative importance in quantitative terms.

The methodology is based on an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour that considers hypotheses based on a number of studies revised in the literature review. This theoretical framework was used as the basis for a questionnaire applied to a sample of 362 young Chinese consumers. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling approach was used to analyse the collected data.

The results revealed three main channels influencing purchasing behaviour which were shown to share the same root, corresponding to the influences of the social network young consumers belong to. This result suggests that social norms have a key role in explaining young consumers' purchasing behaviour through its impact on their needs for status and social recognition, their attitudes towards foreign cultures and foreign brands, and their beliefs regarding the attributes of foreign clothing.

The work therefore provides companies operating in the foreign clothing market the confidence to devise business strategies that focus on the channel demonstrating the highest influencing power. A strategy likely to have the highest influencing power is one that uses celebrities to promote the reputation of products and reinforce the messages associated with status and social recognition. Reinforcement of these strategies could include secondary strategies linked to the other channels such as the one related to the adoption of foreign cultural symbolism.

In contrast to the majority of related studies, this investigation also explores indirect channels or paths by which a behavioural driver affects the behaviour of young Chinese consumers. In fact, this investigation not only simultaneously identified the different paths influencing young Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour but also quantitatively identified their relative importance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how young Chinese consumers' money attitudes influence their compulsive buying behavior.

In total, 303 undergraduate students from Tianjin and Ningbo (two major cities in coastal China) answered a self‐administered questionnaire.

Money attitudes were found to significantly affect young Chinese consumers' compulsive buying behaviour. Specifically, the Retention‐Time dimension significantly affected both male and female consumers' compulsive buying. However, the Power‐Prestige dimension only affected male consumers' compulsive buying. Finally, the Quality dimension had a greater impact on male than on female consumers' compulsive buying.

The data were collected in two major cities in the coastal region of China. Given the differences between coastal and inland China, caution must be taken when generalizing the research results to young consumers from inland China.

The discussion of the relationships between young Chinese consumers' money attitudes and their compulsive buying will help marketers and policy makers to better understand these consumers' spending behaviour. Thus, marketers can identify new market opportunities and form marketing strategies to target young consumers in China. On the other hand, policy makers can also form more effective education strategies to help young consumers to spend wisely.

Different from previous research in money attitudes and compulsive behaviour, the research provides an in‐depth overview of how male and female young Chinese consumers perceive money and how their beliefs about money affect their spending.

Social media and sustainability are changing Chinese consumers’ consumption behavior in notable ways. Few apparel industry sustainability efforts are enforced or well known in China. As China operates its own social media sites, it is necessary to study Chinese social media, rather than Western types, in order to understand its influence on Chinese consumer behavior with regard to sustainability. By extending the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the prototype willingness model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how Chinese consumers were taught their environmentally sustainable apparel (ESA) consumption behavior through social media, and also how the influence of peers affected their purchase intentions.

A total of 238 survey responses were collected and analyzed from a Chinese research firm in 2016. In accord with the study objectives, an exploratory factor analysis was first conducted, and then a two-step analysis of a structural equation model was employed for hypothesis testing. To test the significance of hypothesized mediated effects, a bootstrap procedure with 2,000 bootstrap samples from the original data was used to compute bias-corrected 95% CI for indirect effects. Moreover, hierarchical regressions were demonstrated to verify the unique contribution of social media influence.

The study findings support the previous literature that indicated positive attitudes toward environmentally sustainable purchasing behavior increased as Chinese consumers learned about social and environmental issues. Also, results of the analysis revealed that Chinese consumers’ engagement with social media and their peers were important social influences that were directly tied to increasing sustainable apparel purchase intentions.

By extending two grand theories of the prototype willingness model theory and the TRA, this study underlines a novel link between the influence of social media and ESA purchase intentions among Chinese consumers. Results are valuable in a global context as it is one of only a few studies to explore Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions of ESA through an exclusive social media platform – WeChat – in China.

The purpose of this article is to assist US apparel firms to successfully market in China. It aims to accurately predict Chinese consumers' purchase intentions toward a US brand. For this purpose, it proposes a composite model incorporating two behavioral intention models, Lee's model and decomposed Ajzen's model, and empirically tests the composite model.

A total of 747 consumer data were collected in three cities of China, Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, utilizing a series of mall intercept method at two levels of shopping malls in each city.

Among the proposed direct paths to purchase intention (PI), attitude toward the US brand apparel was the most important in explaining contemporary Chinese consumers' purchase intentions, followed by external perceived behavioral control (PBC) and subjective norm (SN). Two Confucian values, face saving and group conformity, did not directly affect PI at all, and face saving only influenced PI indirectly through the increase of attitude toward US brand apparel. Among external PBC (one's controllability toward a purchase) and internal PBC (one's self‐efficacy), only external PBC led to PI.

By examining the two aspects of PBC, the study validated the importance of consumers' resource controllability (i.e. external PBC) in Chinese purchase behaviors in the midst of rapid socioeconomic changes. This approach advances previous studies that primarily viewed PBC as one dimension.

The paper is one of earliest endeavors to consider the decomposed PBC in a composite model. Also, the paper provides early proof that external PBC is more important than internal PBC in purchase contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Chinese consumers’ behavioral intention to purchase sportswear products online, by applying the model of goal-directed behavior as a research framework.

An online survey was administered to Chinese consumers (N=475) who have purchased sportswear products online in the past. Using SmartPLS 3.0 software, a partial least squares modeling analysis was conducted on the data.

When it comes to influencing the average Chinese consumer’s desire to purchase a product online, the study indicates that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and positive anticipated emotion are significant factors. Moreover, desire and frequency of past behavior significantly influenced Chinese consumers’ intention to buy sportswear products online.

The findings of this study provide a better understanding, through the analyses of Chinese consumers’ decision-making processes, of consumer intention to purchase sportswear products online.

The purpose of this study is to offer a better understanding of contemporary consumer behaviour. This study relates to the complex and value-laden phenomenon of “gift-giving” from the perspective of bicultural consumers. The focus was on the gift-giving practices of Chinese immigrants in Canada within both their current and their past residencies (Canada and China, respectively).

Conceptual guidelines for this study embodied the gift-giving conceptual framework of Sherry (1983) and Chinese cultural values on gift giving (Yau et al., 1999). A qualitative research study was implemented. Specifically, in-depth interviews with Chinese immigrant women mainly from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Ontario, Canada, offered empirical evidence relating to the gestation stage of gift giving.

The findings indicate the complexity of acculturation in gift-giving practices. In terms of gift-giving occasions, Chinese immigrants in Canada, for the most part, adopted the Canadian gift-giving occasions. However, the important role of ethnicity in decision-making is found through their strong sense of differentiation between Chinese and Canadian gift receivers. The results also indicate some Chinese cultural values such as relationship, reciprocity and group orientation as being still important in shaping gift-giving practices, even after immigration to a new country quite distant from the homeland. One cautionary note is that some cultural values such as relationship can be common to both Chinese and Canadian cultural groups.

This research was conducted mainly in the GTA in Ontario, Canada. Future studies could address other large Canadian cities with significant bicultural Chinese populations such as Vancouver in British Columbia and Motreal in Quebec.

This research extends the knowledge of bicultural consumers by examining the evolving gift-giving practices of Chinese immigrants living in Canada. A good understanding of the cultural values important to bicultural consumers will help marketers to efficiently and effectively allocate their marketing resources in attracting these niche consumers.

This study has contributed to the broader field of marketing research. Specifically, the current study offers the importance of understanding values transference of bicultural consumers and their behaviours in integrating into the mainstream gift-giving cultural context.

This study has contributed by offering evidence of how a minority consumer group formed complex acculturation realities within a gift-giving consumption context. This contribution can be counted as a step towards theoretical advancement in the field of acculturation and of understanding bicultural consumers.